Album Type: Original recording remastered
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Samuel Chell
| 02/12/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"It's understandable that the wider public prefers to "Giant Steps" the Coltrane of "Blue Trane," "My Favorite Things" (which established crossover cult status for Coltrane in the '60s), "A Love Supreme," the Ballads albums (with and without Johnny Hartman's vocals), perhaps the largely iconic album with the maestro, Duke Ellington, and finally the many dates with Miles, including, of course, "Kind of Blue").
But a musician or close follower of the "language" of jazz improvisation from Louis through Hawk and Lester to Bird and Diz to Coltrane has got to be most impressed by "Giant Steps," especially the title song. Coltrane simply raised the bar to a completely different level, introducing the major, most seminal, development in the expressive process of jazz improvisation since the complex melodic lines of Bird and Diz. For an improvising musician to make the changes not in 5ths (ii-V-1), the basis of 99% of popular music (and classical sonata form), but in ascending 3rds, and moreover to improvise meaningfully on this foundation rendered unstable because of the rapid tempo in tandem with the frequency of the unaccustomed chord changes was a feat of Olympian proportions (listen to Tommy Flanagan, one of the very best, struggling during his piano solo).